


Late Night Walks

by TechyTechno



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insomnia, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Other, POV First Person, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28822263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TechyTechno/pseuds/TechyTechno
Summary: Kinkpaw is unable to sleep because of the many anxieties she can't stop thinking about when shes trying to sleep. She decides to go take a walk to clear her mind a bit. Takes place before she starts her Dark Forest training and before Egg arrives in the clan. I wrote this to dip my toes in first person writing since I never write in first person.





	Late Night Walks

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 6/29/20.

After a terrible day, all you would wanna do at night is get a good rest to prepare you for hopefully a better tomorrow. Even if a better tomorrow weren't to come that day, atleast you would've escaped the world for a few solid hours and not have to worry about how much of a burden you are.

But of course, it always seemed like the world was out to get you, because not only did you have a shitty day, you were also having a shitty night too. Not that anything bad happened tonight, besides the usual looks and comments you got from your stupid clanmates who you were forced to call family. But that happened anytime of the day, so it wasn't really an exclusively nighttime thing.

What made this night so shitty was that you just _couldn't_ get yourself to sleep. No matter how many times you twisted and turned, you just couldn't get comfortable and, you now have to deal with your rather dark thoughts race through your mind. Yeah, it was one of those nights of constant self loathing and anxiety. It wasn't going too great.

Letting out a soft sigh, you began to reflect on what made this day worse than the others.

Firstly, you had messed up a whole lot more than usual today. You kept missing all your catches for one reason or another, but usually they were stupid mistakes you should've learned to _not_ do by now. But of course, being the idiot you were, you managed to fuck everything up somehow like you always do.

This lead to you lashing out and breaking out into tears when Hollypath tried to assure you it was just "one of those days". Dear Starclan, you never screamed that loud in your entire life, you think. You let Hollypath have it. You started yelling about whatever came to your mind, hurling every insult you could think at them, and started to claw at your fur again.

Alarmed, Hollypath quickly stopped you from doing any harm to yourself and tried to calm you down. They didn't even seem mad at all, more so just worried about your sudden outburst. God, how you hated them. You hated how they always found something to like about you, even when your flaws obviously outweighed everything else. Why did they always want to help you- not just you, but everyone? You would never understand how they could do it.

Anyways, after you calmed down a bit, they brought you back to camp and insisted you got some rest for the rest of the day. They then left to go talk to Maplestar about what happened- you weren't sure if thats what they talked about, but you couldn't think of any other thing Hollypath could've talked to her about today besides your meltdown.

You've been worried all day about what Maplestar was gonna say to you tomorrow, if she even cared at all. Which she probably did. Just as much as Hollypath, maybe. But you couldn't help but think she only really cared out of pity. She seemed nervous and scared around you, and you weren't quite sure why. She and Hollypath tried to give you a good life in Windclan, and actually brought you up pretty well, but you didn't appreciate their efforts. It wasn't there fault, really. More so your shitty clanmates.

You would probably never gave a good life, you concluded. You weren't a good person and nobody in this clan liked you all that much. You always messed everything up and you had no friends at all here. You're always rude and snippy with everyone in this clan, including other apprentices, which scared off alot, if not all potential friends you could've made. But you didn't care. They were probably just out to use you anyway. They would all leave eventually. You were just sparing yourself the pain of getting hurt. If your own mother abandoned you without even knowing you, then what was stopping anybody else from leaving you when they did know you? You were just playing it safe.

God. On that note, you always make both Hollypath and Maplestar always worried about you, even if they don't make it completely obvious all the time. Probably because they didn't wanna annoy or baby you too much. You've pushed everyone away, and isolated yourself from most of your clanmates. You don't really do much when you finish training besides go into the Apprentices' den and lay in your nest for the rest of the day. You always snapped and get pissy about cats who tried to talk to you, and start getting really close to attacking them. Hollypath usually had their eye on you to make sure that this didn't happen, but sometimes, you just really wanted to have some of your damn clanmates have it for not only their fake bullshit, but also their dumb comments and tones and- uggh.

You hated making others worried, though. Probably even more than having them hate you. You hate showing weakness and vulnerability, you hate being seen as soft and someone everybody always need to take care of and keep their eye on. This is why you've just built up a front for yourself, to keep yourself from being seen as any of those things. You forced yourself to be mean so others wouldn't worry about you, and instead detest you, so when you finally broke down, they wouldn't care.

Expect Hollypath always did care. And so did maybe Maplestar, and you especially made Hollypath worried sick. Enough infact, to where they were probably gonna have Maplestar talk to you tomorrow. You were dreading that- what would you say? You would have to come up with something tonight.

Maybe you could just snip at her and refuse to tell her anything. But that would only make the both of them even more worried, so maybe not. You could just comply with her and tell her the truth, but that could lead to your clanmates hating you more, or them thinking you're being sensitive, or the both of them either hating you and thinking you're oversensitive. So maybe not that either. After you contemplated all your possible responses and all the ways they could turn out, it was all starting to make your head hurt like crazy.

You turned over again and let out a huff, resting your cheek on the soft bedding. Maybe you would lay on your side tonight. New positions may just help you sleep, you think. You closed your eyes, trying to have your mind stop racing with all your insecurities and worries. You tried to push away every thought, but it felt impossible to just keep ignoring them. It hurt your head to avoid them, even if you didn't wanna think about them at all. You could never bring yourself to relax and just.. go to bed.

You let out another small exhale and shut your eyes tight, making one finally attempt to just ignore all your negative and toxic thoughts and just go to sleep. Shut your eyes and rest them. You were exhausted, you needed this sleep. But you still couldn't get yourself to fall asleep after several minutes. You just felt way too restless to sleep, you needed to get up and move your legs a bit before you could hit the hay.

You slowly opened your eyes and groaned, carefully getting up from your nest and slipping out of the den. You raised your head to look up at the stars scattered across the sky and yawned. Nobody was up to bother you or come looking for you, and you couldn't sleep, so you might aswell go take a nice long walk to destress a bit, maybe. Moving around always helped get your thoughts under control. You quietly made your way towards the camp's entrance and slipped through the tall grasses, seemingly moving ahead aimlessly until the grass finally began to shorten, and then at last you were out on the moor.

You let in a long, loud inhale, and breathed out softly. Your eyes stung from being so tired, but you didn't care. The walking would likely tire you out, and guarantee you to fall asleep when you came back to your nest. After standing in the moor for what seemed like minutes, you finally began to trail around the territory. You would just follow wherever the soft, slightly chilly breeze took you. It didn't matter where you went, you just needed to walk around for a bit to get the many thoughts out of your head. You took long strides each time you took a step, and walked rather quickly. Just walk and think.

Thats all you needed to do tonight.


End file.
